Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. was founded in the early 70s by
David Borden at Cornell University.
The group started as a trio with Steve Drews and Linda Fisher and released
two LPs (s/t, 73 and _Like a Duck to Water_ '76) on their own Earthquack
label. Cuneiform has recently reissued the first LP with extra unreleased
stuff from the time on a CD titled _1970-73_.
Although they were nominally academic musicians, the group was something of
a reaction against the prevailing academic musical style - it's very simple
and repetitive analog synth stuff, very melodic, not a lot of noise.
From the first LP the track "Ceres Motion" is sort of a mixture of mid-70s
Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Philip Glass - very energetic,
sequencer-driven stuff. The track "Train" is intriguing because of its
minimalism - it's got three basic sounds that recur for 6 1/2 minutes to
create a sparse landscape - probably could be confused for some contemporary
German stuff in a blindfold test.
Borden has continued to compose under his own name - he's got a big piece
called _The Continuing Story of Counterpoint_ that seems to always be
growing - it's up to 12 parts, available over 3 CDs. I haven't heard the CDs
but saw part of it performed live once and found it a bit dull compared to
the Mother Mallard stuff. Much like Philip Glass (IMHO), his efforts to
expand on his original ideas mostly sound watered down.
The Mother Mallard records remain among my all-time favorites - the music
could in some ways be regarded as proto-IDM except, unlike the Krautrock
music where there's a direct link to Detroit and beyond, Mother Mallard was
kind of working in a bit of a void - they weren't part of a movement,
although it's always intriguing to hear people arrive at the same aesthetic
ends from a totally different direction.
Bob
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